To the Identity Ecosystem and Beyond: It’s the NSTICiversary!

Today we celebrate the most special of days for the NSTIC National Program Office. Four years ago at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., we released the President’s strategy to enhance the choice, efficiency, security, and privacy of online transactions. As you are seeing this month in our retrospective blog series—two are posted with two more coming—this community has accomplished a great deal in the last four years. It’s clear we’ve come so far…but still have much work to do. You’ve already seen this month isn’t just about April Fools’ Day pranks for us. Over the last three weeks, we’ve announced a new funding opportunity for privacy-enhancing technologies, opened a comment period on SP 800-63-2, and released a report on our pilots program. We’re also preparing to transition the NPO’s leadership: at the end of April, Jeremy Grant will leave the public sector and I’ll step in to replace him. Through this transition, some things will change, but much of the great work we’ve been doing with the community will continue: running a pilots program that is moving the market toward broader use of strong, federated, privacy-enhancing credentials; supporting Connect.gov, which is in operation and driving government as an early adopter of NSTIC solutions; and participating in the IDESG as it enters the homestretch to finalize requirements and release v1 of the Identity Ecosystem Framework. As the pace of change increases in the marketplace so must the pace of our efforts. Over the next several months, we’ll be announcing a host of initiatives to show just how the NPO plans to see the job through. Check back often for updates – we’ll continue to post about our progress throughout this leadership transition and beyond. In the meantime, happy NSTICiversary!